


First Sight

by roswyrm



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Compliant, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, other characters are mentioned but basically none of them speak much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-02 13:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20757668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: Most races have a series of soulmates, in varying shades of platonic, romantic, or sexual bonds. Dwarves, Elves, Dragonborn, and some (but not all) half-blooded children of these races are the notable outlier, having only one soulmate. This soulbond is more intense than the soulbonds of races with many soulmates (for reasons unknown), and this has caused many to assume or interpret these relationships as inherently romantic. This is, of course, blatantly untrue.Or, Azu has tattooed flowers for every scar her soulmates receive, Wilde has colourful marks where his soulmates first touch him, Hamid has strings wrapped around his fingers leading to his soulmates, Cel has black tattoos that turn to a riot of colour when their soulmates make contact, and Zolf can't see colour until he touches his soulmate.





	First Sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maevemil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maevemil/gifts).

> this is dedicated to maeve, because Literal Historical Man x Angsty Dwarf Who Finally Got Some Coping Mechanisms But Make It Soulmates is a very cursed concept, which is exactly what she deserves, even if i went and made it a good friendship. happy birthday, maeve!! i love you very much, i hope you enjoy the fic!!!

The reporter leans down and looks about to honest to god _boop Zolf on the nose_ but something in the look on his face must stop him. “I’ll try not to enjoy it,” he says with the smuggest grin Zolf’s ever seen in his life – and that is _saying something_ when he grew up with Feryn ‘I was right and therefore I get to gloat for the foreseeable decade’ Smith – and Zolf doesn’t _decide_ so much as _understand,_ in a moment of blinding clarity, that he was always going to headbutt Oscar Wilde right in his pretty face.

(Human blood is red.

This is an abstract fact for Zolf, he just knows it, learned it on a ship along with most of his medical knowledge. Human, dwarven, halfling, and most elven blood is red. Orcs vary, but it’s usually a deeper purple, tiefling blood is about as predictable as the rest of their traits – which is to say, not fucking very – goblins have green blood, and that’s about as far as his knowledge goes. It never really mattered because he couldn’t see the colours anyway, so it didn’t impact him at all.)

Human blood is red, and this is an abstract fact for Zolf, but it’s suddenly becoming his reference for the shocking colours swirling through his vision. Bertie punches him in the face, and he’s forced to sit down, and when he wipes his nose, his blood must be red, too. Certainly looks the same as Wilde’s.

Wilde.

Oscar Wilde, who has a look of disdainful surprise mixed with impressed annoyance showing clearly in his eyes, and also a blooming mark spreading across his face like some kind of blush in a colour Zolf doesn’t know the name for. “Right,” Wilde says, daubing at the blood and not noticing the stares he’s getting from the entire room at the _blatant soulmark on his face,_ “well. I’ll see you at nine, Sir Bertrand.”

* * *

(It isn’t until the morning after that Oscar realises there’s sea-green across the bridge of his nose and – in almost the exact shade of the feather boa – a hot pink handprint on the small of his back. “At least they’ll be interesting,” he mutters.)

* * *

The next time Zolf sees him, it’s in the colourless photo next to his article. His hair is even floppier in the photograph, and he looks somehow more pleased with himself. Zolf is angry at the publicity, yeah, but he’s got to admit, maybe being soulmates with him won’t be so bad if he can reduce Bertie to wordless spluttering.

(Doesn’t mean he doesn’t quash down anything remotely resembling warmth. It feels friendly and nothing more, but he knows that that can twist and grow in ways he would rather die than feel metamorphosing in his chest cavity.)

* * *

The water Zolf summons is transparent, clear and sparkling in the electric glow of La Triomphe’s conference room as he dumps it over Wilde’s head. Wilde levels him with a flat look, and Zolf beams at him. Soulmate or not, it leaves a warmth in his chest to see Wilde so utterly inconvenienced and unamused. “Yes,” Wilde drawls, setting the bucket on the ground and clicking his fingers, “quite. As I was saying—” Zolf makes direct eye contact with him, and, in a show of pettiness that he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of before meeting this asshole, clicks his fingers.

Wilde is thoroughly soaked once more.

Zolf beams.

* * *

Zolf regrets the Cure Wounds almost as soon as he casts it. He would have been fine for a little while longer, and now there’s someone headed toward them. Great. He turns to Wilde and puts a finger to his lips in a _shush_ motion, to find Wilde has _stood up, well within view of the lackey, and is trying to cast something._ Zolf is going to kill him, soulmate or not. Wilde clicks his fingers, and there’s a brief flow of coloured light that Zolf recognises from Hamid’s failed attempts at Charm Person. “You idiot,” Zolf growls, and Wilde stands where he is, hand outstretched, dressed like a sparkly target.

“I thought it would work,” he defends. He doesn’t sound the least apologetic, and Zolf wants to _strangle_ him. He settles for rolling his eyes, kicking the bard in the ankle, and hurling an icicle at the lackey’s face.

* * *

When Wilde sees him again, he opens his arms like he’s expecting Zolf to hug him. “Not in a million years,” Zolf says plainly, and Wilde laughs. It’s big and flashy, even for him, but Zolf swears he sees something pained in his showman’s smile.

* * *

The legs take some getting used to. The legs take some getting used to, and Zolf wants to lie in bed for forever and ever and never have to get used to them. Walking is hard, walking hurts if he doesn’t do it right, and he just wants to _sleep._

Wilde, as per usual, ruins his plans pretty thoroughly. “Up you get,” he says like the asshole he is, “there’s someone downstairs to help with your physical therapy.” Zolf glares at him and turns over in bed, hiding his face under the covers. “Really?” Wilde asks, and Zolf can hear the stupid smugness in his voice. It’s paired with something like exhaustion, too, and damn if Zolf doesn’t know how that feels.

“Go away,” Zolf grumbles from his place under the blanket. The bed shifts as Wilde sits down at the foot of it. Zolf sighs, “Look, I– I’m tired of feeling useless, okay? Just let me stay here.” There’s a beat of silence, and then the covers are being torn away. “Wh– Wilde I _swear to gods—”_

“Making progress will make you feel better,” Wilde insists, and Zolf glowers at him. “Also, finding someone trustworthy was expensive, and I’m not letting you waste my money because you’re having an episode.” Zolf grumbles, and Wilde holds out a hand to him. “Come on. Stop wallowing and help me help you.”

“I hate you,” Zolf informs him, but he takes the hand.

* * *

(Wilde locks himself in the cell while Zolf is burying the body. Zolf is… hopeful, somehow. Wilde doesn’t understand it in the least — he hasn’t been hopeful since he was seventeen years old, why should he start now that the world is going to hell? Zolf is hopeful, and he would have tried to heal the deep gash through Wilde’s cheek, and it would have gotten him infected too. Wilde locks himself in the cage and throws the key out of reach. Zolf comes to find him, and he hasn’t even bothered to wipe the grave dirt off of himself. “Want me to bring you anything?” Zolf asks, but his mouth pulls down in a frown.

“Medical supplies and alcohol,” Wilde says, and his smile is forced into its proper shape, the slanted smirk that he worked so hard to turn into a dazzling smile, but it hurts too much to keep up, anyway.)

* * *

Wilde is curled into a ball under his desk, and Zolf can’t tell for certain, but he’s pretty sure he recognises the sounds of hyperventilation. Zolf sits down on his knees nearby and asks, “Can I help?” Wilde nods, just once, and Zolf does his best not to get annoyed at how curt he’s being. He used to be like that, used to be even worse, and it’s not his place to judge. “How?”

“Can’t breathe,” Wilde hisses, so choked and quiet that Zolf has to fight down the urge to wince. Doing so would only damage Wilde’s pride, and that’s not exactly something that would help at the moment. His accent is audible, thick in the way it only gets when he’s stressed out of his mind, and Zolf sighs.

“In,” he says, “one, two, three, four. Hold. Out, one, two, three, four. Hold.” Wilde manages to uncurl, some, and Zolf offers him his hand. Wilde takes it, squeezing so tightly it grinds the bones of Zolf’s hand together, but as he continues to breathe, the pressure eases off bit by bit. “Should I keep going?” Wilde nods, but he’s leaning back against the inside of his desk with his legs unfurled in all of their stupid, gangly glory, so Zolf figures he’s doing better now than he was before. After a few more minutes of this, Wilde sighs and rubs at his eyes.

He doesn’t let go of Zolf’s hand as he says, “Sorry.” He gives Zolf a wonky grin as he laughs, “Don’t even know what set me off.”

Zolf shrugs. “You don’t need to apologise. Everything okay, now?”

“I mean, there’s the literal apocalypse happening outside.”

“W– _yes,_ but aside from that.” Zolf reaches forward and knocks gently on Wilde’s head. “Any apocalypses happening in here?”

Wilde swats his hand away with an exasperatedly affectionate expression, the green across his nose wrinkling with his scrunched-up smile. “Pretty sure the plural is apocalypsi,” he mutters, smoothing a hand down his wrinkled dress shirt. His accent is still there, which means he’s either not as fine as he’s pretending to be or just comfortable enough to let it stay.

“Why would you do that to a perfectly good word,” Zolf deadpans, and Wilde snorts. He squeezes Zolf’s hand, and Zolf squeezes back before shooting to his feet and swearing violently. _“I left the wontons in,”_ he hisses, and Wilde bites his lip to keep himself from laughing.

He gasps, “The wontons!” Zolf flaps a stressed hand at him to make him shut the hell up. “I’ll eat them even if they’re burnt,” Wilde promises, notably not shut up and only half-teasing.

Zolf groans. He goes to turn on his heel and run down the stairs, but he stops himself, setting a hand on Wilde’s shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?” Wilde rolls his eyes and shoos him off, and Zolf goes gratefully.

(The wontons are, in fact, burnt. Zolf complains about this as Wilde crunches on them without comment, thinking in the privacy of his own head that he’s glad Zolf is here. That he’s glad one of his soulmates still is.)

* * *

Hamid is fidgeting in the way that Zolf remembers means he’s toying with his soulstrings. The one on his ring finger, the one that ties him to– tied. The one that _tied_ him to Sasha. Azu is chatting with Cel, scratching at the wilted circle of moonflowers at the back of her head. Cel’s taken their jacket off, and there are splashes of jet-black skin interspersed with winding patches of vibrant colours, and Zolf doesn’t know what the hell kind of soulmarks those are, but Cel seems awfully nonchalant about them.

The conversation turns to soulmates, the way it always seems to when people are in need of hope.

“Your string is silver,” Hamid says with a thin smile, bending his middle-right finger in an indication of the digit Cel’s soulstring is tied to. Cel shrugs in a _‘makes sense’_ sort of motion and brushes a hand through their worryingly vertical silver hair. “And yours, Zolf… it’s changed.” Zolf cocks his head, and Hamid shows him his hand as though flashing a wedding ring to an unwanted suitor, and Zolf waits for the halfling to remember that no one else can see his strings. “Oh, you can’t—” there it is— “um, it used to be blue? All different shades, the farther away I got from you the more shimmery it was, like– like waves, I think, but it’s– it’s green, now. It must have changed while I was in Rome.” He seems troubled about that, about the reminder that non-physical soulbinding cease to work in Rome, and Zolf wonders how it would feel to have his colours stripped away from him after only just getting to see them. He thinks he understands the hurt, frustrated look in Hamid’s eyes.

Zolf gives him a comforting smile and changes the subject slightly, shifting it back to something light. “Which colour’s green, again?” The room goes quiet, everyone blinking at him confusedly. Fuck. What did he say? That’s not, like– why would asking what green is make them all stare at him like that? “I mean– well, I know most of them, but– I don’t remember what. Green? Looks like?”

Hamid squints at him, Azu blinks worriedly, and Cel has their eyebrows raised like an experiment has just gone horribly awry in a fascinating way, but Wilde seems to get it first and nudges him in the ankle to get his attention. “Same colour as your soulmark here,” he says, tapping at the bridge of his nose.

Zolf nods in thanks, and Azu leans over to put a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry you lost your colours,” she says softly.

Zolf sets his hand over hers – it’s almost comically small – and squeezes, reassuring, “I didn’t lose my colours, Azu, but thank you for the sympathy. I just don’t remember the names for them; I only know red because the first colour I saw was Wilde’s bloody nose.”

“Romantic,” chimes in Cel.

_“Ew,”_ says Zolf instead of asking about their questionable definition of the words ‘cute’ and ‘romantic’. “No, not– we’re not that kind of soulmates!”

“I _do_ have standards,” adds Wilde, unhelpfully.

“You slept with Bertie.”

“I said I had standards — I never mentioned anything about common sense.”

“What, like the common sense that would have stopped you from trying to—”

Hamid, in typical Hamid fashion, interrupts them with a nearly-screamed, _“YOU’RE SOULMATES?”_

**Author's Note:**

> hamid voice "are _you_ sleeping with him???"  
zolf voice "i'm not sleeping with anyone, and he's not sleeping, period"
> 
> not pictured: the lights suddenly going out while zolf is on a mission and him nearly breaking down completely because darkvision is black-and-white and he thinks wilde just died when he wasn't there to protect him  
also not pictured: this turning into a comedy of errors when hamid is like _zolf i can't see in the dark help_


End file.
